It’s clear that world history never really deviates from it’s focus on the Middle East.

“East”, as opposed to “the West”, refers to the Old World: Asia, Europe, Africa and Australia. China, Japan and the other countries of eastern Asia can be called the Orient or the Far East because they are the furthest east. Israel, Egypt and the Arab nations however form the middle of the eastern world and that is where we get the term Middle East. (As maybe you’ve guessed, there is no Western East!—except to say that Europe as a whole is generally referred to as western because of its culture and its languages.) Note also that the Middle East is not far from the middle of the Land Hemisphere, that half of the globe which encompasses the most land area.

While Britain, Canada and the United States have always displayed an interest in Israel it was news to me when I heard of the interest shown in the Orient. Here is an encouraging report on the interest in Israel that has been sparked in the Philippines. I’ve been blessed by many such reports from the Joshua Fund and I hope that you will enjoy it also. (By the way, it was this small but reputable nation, the cluster of islands called the Philippines, that cast the deciding vote for Israel’s statehood in 1948).